I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world.

It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.

An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply

The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.

One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.

...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still young white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly lit streets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist. But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.